


Plant Lilies at My Head

by cinphoria



Series: Chanson [1]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Dissociation, Episode Tag, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues, episode 174 spoilers, it is all angst here lads, minor self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27006163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinphoria/pseuds/cinphoria
Summary: Three scene tags of what Zolf didn't say.
Series: Chanson [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1971862
Comments: 11
Kudos: 35





	1. three paces on the sand

Zolf stared.

He stood, and he stared. In the background, his shipmates continued on, carrying out his orders, but there was that familiar feeling of being submerged beneath water. He couldn't break through, and their voices were so distant, so inconsequential. The cold should be biting into his skin, but the sting of it seemed to be happening to somebody else, far from him. 

Zolf stood in the snow, and stared at Oscar's body, thrown haphazardly across tree branches like common litter blown this way and that by a careless breeze. 

_(No no no. Please.)_

_(Please, I dunno how to do this without you anymore.)_

He clenched trembling hands until his nails dug into his palms and he felt skin break and he could breathe air again. 

_Compartmentalise. Triage, dammit. Treat the living. Save **them**._

_(Because I can't save you. You're beyond me now.)_

_Move on._

_(Please don't leave me here.)_

_Grieve **later**._

**_Move on._ **

"Move on," he exhaled, and his eyes don't sting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alex, when I thought to myself a few weeks ago, "I should find something to use 'plant lilies at my head' in", I did not mean like this. How are your monkey's paw powers extending even to us?


	2. green grass where a man lies dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's going to be a change in format. I'd originally planned for three short scene tags and then, the resurrection we're all waiting for, but it seems the last part wants to be substantially longer than these (but still pretty short. I can't write longform for shit, you guys), and I'd much rather have it by itself.

They weren't the first line of his own dead that he'd seen.

They weren't even the first he had to lay out himself.

Mining is a dangerous business, and little Zolf had seen too many good folks dragged from beneath the rocks, broken and covered in stone dust. Folks he knew, talked to often, called aunties and uncles though they didn't share a drop of blood between them. He knew whose parents they were and which of his friends would be crying that night. And so, he learned from a young age that whoever said the dead look like they're sleeping were full of shit.

He was almost one of the dead laid out in a line, on the ground, that day he got Feryn killed. _(He should've been. That'd be fair.)_

He had no one to lay out after the shipwreck, the sea washing them away to distant beaches and abysses. _(At least he didn't have to look at them.)_

He'd had plenty, once he was a pirate and an outlaw. _(And made other folks have to lay out their own dead plenty, too.)_

His hands didn't tremble now, not from the grief and not from the cold, as he methodically retrieved Carter.

Meerk.

Sassraa.

Oscar.

He laid them down, in a line on the ground, so gently as if they were babes being put to bed.

He didn't look at their faces, because they don't look like they're sleeping.


	3. a narrow bed for me to lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have changed. Please mind them.

Cel wouldn't stop haranguing him about resurrection. 

They didn't mean to. He knew they didn't. It's just how they dealt with uncertainty - too many questions and tangents rapid-fired exactly loudly enough to prompt bystanders to duck their heads and politely pretend they couldn't hear the conversation.

Regardless of intention, he could only try to hold on under the barrage as he felt his guilt and anguish reflect off of Cel's own and back and forth until his entire body felt like an ugly, roiling bog of shame. His stomach tried to do somersaults and he wished he didn't have to hold it together for the good of the crew, who even now still trusted in him.

_(I don't feel powerful. I feel power **less**.) _

Cel was still talking and Zolf's head swam.

_Sometimes you can't save the world, but you can save a person._

_(What if I can't even do that?)_

_(I'm not enough to save them. I'm never enough.)_

"I... I can't. I'm not strong enough."

And then someone who was strong enough came. In a single moment, Zolf felt both hope and the depth of his own wretchedness.

He got to work preparing for their ritual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next part is the fixit and will go up later this week, but be warned that it'll go into more depth on the existing heavy subjects plus some more.
> 
> It's going to get worse before it gets better.


End file.
